


sentimental, are we?

by hubblestars



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Pining, Post-Season/Series 04, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 16:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubblestars/pseuds/hubblestars
Summary: “I’m so tired.” Annalise admits. Her thumb moves to brush across Bonnie’s bottom lip. “I can’t push you away anymore.”





	sentimental, are we?

**Author's Note:**

> hi! I know I'm so late to the party but I just finished season 4 of how to get away with murder and bonnalise have got me under their spell :') this is so self indulgent and domestic but I thought I'd extend the lovely fluff that we were blessed with at the end of season 4 bc Annalise and Bonnie looking after baby Christopher had me Feeling some Things
> 
> bonnalise r soulmates always!!!

“Hey.”

Bonnie, crossed legged on her bed, looks up from the small, blinking face that she’d been staring at for a while longer than she should have been, perhaps. Even as she glances towards the figure in the doorway, her pinky finger is still in the tight grasp of a baby’s hand, and Christopher, gurgling with laughter, is positioned between her legs. He falls back against her, the back of his head warm and steady on her stomach.

Annalise is hovering by the door. In the fading daylight her dark eyes are unreadable, but Bonnie thinks that she looks better than she has for months now. Healthier. Even without her makeup, Annalise looks soft and bright in a pale cardigan that falls past her knees. Her hair just slightly curls around her shoulders and a strand has fallen over her eyes, irritating enough that Bonnie wants to brush it away and tuck it behind Annalise’s ear, but knows she can’t go there, can’t feel the press of the tips of her fingers against Annalise’s cheek again out of fear she might break an unspoken rule.

“Miss Class Action.” Bonnie says, a little surprise slipping into her voice even as she smiles. She runs her free hand through her hair, the sleeve of her oversized jumper falling down slightly. “What are you doing here?”

“Laurel’s out.” Bonnie raises an eyebrow, and Annalise lets out a low chuckle that’s warm and familiar to Bonnie’s ears. She hasn’t heard it in a while, especially not directed at her, and it catches her off guard, makes her nervously bite the inside of her cheek and look back into Christopher’s blinking face. “Yes, she’s with Frank.”

“It’s a date, isn’t it?”

“God forbid.” Annalise replied, but she’s smiling. “She said I could spend some time with Christopher while she was out and, well, here I am.”

Bonnie shifts on the bed, letting Christopher’s hand fall away from her finger and into his lap. 

“I can leave if you need me to.” Bonnie says. She’s used to the familiar sting of disappointment, of shame, when Annalise dismisses her from the room; it’s easy enough after years of dismissal to brush the pain from her shoulders, but here in the nursery with Christopher close to her, her feelings written in the curve of her frown, the rejection would break another piece of her heart away. Things have been unsteady, lately, and Bonnie feels further from Annalise than ever before. Estranged at sea.

Annalise considers her for a moment, and Bonnie can hear her own heartbeat thrum in her ears, ticking inside of her chest.

“No. No, stay. I’ll make us some tea.” Annalise’s lip curls slightly into a hesitant smile. “Unless you want something stronger.”

“Tea’s fine.” Bonnie says, quiet.

When Annalise leaves the room, Bonnie takes a moment to breathe. It’s not as difficult to be around Annalise now, she thinks, pressing her finger to Christopher’s nose, it’s easier to be with her than it has been before. Perhaps it was that word, the one that lifted the pressure from her chest, that made her feel that she was releasing her breath after holding it for too long.  _ Love.  _ She’d said it in Isaac’s office over and over again until her voice cracked, and she’d said it leaning against the wall looking into Annalise’s face.  _ I love her. I love you. _ Perhaps admitting it freed her.

Then Annalise is beside her with her fingers on Bonnie’s wrist, handing her a warm mug of tea, and Bonnie realises she’s not free at all.

“He’s an angel, isn’t he? He looks so much like Wes.” Annalise says, a little breathily, when she’s comfortable opposite Bonnie on the bed. She takes Christopher into her arms and smiles at him and Bonnie tightens her grip on the hot mug between her palms. When a tear slips past Annalise’s cheek and down her chin, Bonnie understands and looks away. She feels Annalise’s pain sharply, like her own, because Christopher is the very image of something that the both of them had lost a long time ago.

“We could’ve had this.” Bonnie murmurs, into her tea, and she feels Annalise glance at her but the moment is too raw to look back. It’s a recognition of solidarity.  _ We both lost a baby, we’re both sharing this feeling between us.  _ The realisation that the broken beat of their hearts is in time in that very moment is almost as intimate as the feeling of Annalise’s fingers around her cheeks when they’d kissed.

“We have it now, Bonnie.” 

Bonnie finally meets Annalise’s gaze and smiles. She presses her knee against Annalise’s and they stay there in the silence of the nursery, surrounded by colour and sunlight and the small tufts of Christopher’s hair, while the sun sets outside. It feels like a step forward, Bonnie thinks, away from the D.A and her lonely bedroom and the empty wine glasses by her sink. It feels like the end of darkness and a beginning of something as pure as the light in Christopher’s eyes.

“I wanted to say something.” Annalise begins. She looks embarrassed, playing with a loose thread on Christopher’s baby clothes. “I know we haven’t been the best of friends to each other, not for a long time, but I was thinking… well, working for the D.A doesn’t seem like very much fun.”

Bonnie stiffens.

“Are you asking me to work for you again?” She asks, a hard coldness just tinting the edge of her voice. It’s out of place in this room, and it doesn’t fit among the bottles, the baby clothes and Annalise’s soft cardigan.

“To work  _ with _ me.”

Bonnie freezes and almost drops the mug into her lap. She’d begged for this before, when she’d first started working for Annalise. She’d pleaded with Annalise and told her that they could be partners, could work together, that they would climb to the top faster with each other’s help. She had dreamed for years of entering a room by Annalise’s side as her equal.

“You would want that?”   


“Have you ever known me to make a decision I didn’t believe in wholeheartedly?” Annalise pauses. “I want you to work beside me. You’ve made mistakes, Bonnie, but what good lawyer hasn’t? Look at everything you’ve achieved. I’ve been a fool to overlook you for all of these years.”

“No.” Bonnie says, shaking her head, but her voice cracks a little. A few tears fall into her tea. “I would just fail you again. I always do.”

“Oh, Bonnie. You think I didn’t see you, but I always did. I still do. You do everything you can for me.” Annalise breathes, and Bonnie’s fingers tremble around her mug. “More than anyone.”

“I’m not good enough for you, Annalise. I never will be.”

Annalise smiles, then, and Bonnie hasn’t seen her smile like that in God knows how long. It rattles something in her, and widens the crack in her armour. Bonnie shifts so she can press a hand to the top of Christopher’s head, half to steady herself and half just to touch him.

“I couldn’t say it.” Annalise whispers, and presses her hand over Bonnie’s where it lays on Christopher’s head. They haven’t touched like this in months. Bonnie is sure Annalise can feel her hand tremble and the thought makes her so nervous that she spills a little tea in her lap. “Even after you confessed, I couldn’t tell you that I-”

“Annalise?”

“Are you really going to make me say it?” Annalise laughs through her tears and Bonnie grins with her, notices how the room and Annalise’s hand and the small rise and fall of Christopher’s chest are the most beautiful thing in the world. This moment, as unsteady and careful as it is, is the warmest she’s had with Annalise in a long time. Perhaps since she’d felt the press of Annalise’s lips against her own.

“I’ll say it.” Bonnie says, and as always the words are hard to say but worth it for the way they sound in her ears when she says them. “I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Bonnie.” Annalise says, through tears. “Why do you do this to me?”

Bonnie is about to ask  _ do what  _ but her words get lost somewhere in her throat when Annalise puts a hand on her cheek and brushes her thumb against Bonnie’s ear. Bonnie takes it as an opening, an offering, and sets down her tea on the table by the bed so she can finally tuck that lock of hair behind Annalise’s ear. 

“I’m so tired.” Annalise admits. Her thumb moves to brush across Bonnie’s bottom lip. “I can’t push you away anymore.”

“Then don’t.” Bonnie pauses when Annalise’s gaze falls to her mouth, her stomach fluttering as her lips move against Annalise’s thumb. “Do you… do you remember? That night.”

_ Remember.  _ Did she remember Bonnie leaning over her on the bed to kiss her; she’d thought it would be strange to kiss her, thought it would be hard and bitter, but the reality - the softness, the feel of Annalise’s breath against her mouth - had been so much warmer. Did she remember Bonnie pressing against her mouth again, and then again, because she might never get to feel her lips again? She’d realised then that  _ this  _ was all she’d ever wanted, and she didn’t want to let it go again.

“How could I forget?”

“You mean it?”

_ She wants me to kiss her,  _ Bonnie thinks, when Annalise’s breath catches in her throat. She wraps a lock of Annalise’s hair around her finger and the longing almost kills her. But if this was change, if this was a new beginning, then it couldn’t always be Bonnie  _ giving.  _ It couldn’t just be Bonnie’s glances across the room and Bonnie’s favours and Bonnie leaving when Annalise tells her to. It had to be a relationship that was  _ equal.  _ It had to be walking in a room together, it had to be a shared bed, it had to be Annalise meeting her gaze, for once, and giving  _ back.  _

“You’ll be the death of me, Winterbottom.” Annalise says, in fond irritation, but she gently leans forward across Christopher and presses a soft kiss to Bonnie’s mouth. 

Annalise still feels the same: warm and steady and desperate. Once upon a time she might’ve tasted like vodka, but now she just tastes of chocolate and  _ Annalise _ . And she smells like home. Bonnie doesn’t realise she’s weeping in earnest until Annalise leans back and swipes the tears from her cheeks with raised eyebrows.

“Sentimental, are we?”

“No.” Bonnie denies vehemently, quickly drying her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. Christopher is gurgling with laughter between them and it makes the situation lighter, into something softer and more manageable. 

Bonnie kisses Annalise again until she can’t breathe and Annalise is pulling back to gasp into her neck. It’s hard to stop when the need that had been building in her chest for all these years is finally being released. Is finally wanted.

“I think you should stop doing that.” Annalise warns, her eyes dark, and Bonnie smirks.

“Oh, you do?”

Then Annalise’s phone rings. The ringtone breaks Bonnie out of her dazed, euphoric spell and she stiffens, but Annalise’s hands come to rest on her shoulders and squeeze. The smell of Annalise’s perfume is going to be stained into the threads of her jumper for weeks but she can’t bring herself to care, and vows never to wash it again.

“It’s just Connor. He wants help with his application.” Annalise says apologetically, glancing at her phone and then back at Bonnie with a grimace. Bonnie nods.

“Take all the time you need.” Bonnie says, smiling at Annalise as she rises from the bed. 

Bonnie stays still and sits Christopher in her lap, and as she hums to him quietly, her happiness fills up the room around her _.  _ She realises suddenly that her face must be flushed and her lips must be swollen and her hair must be a state from when Annalise had threaded her fingers through it, but she can’t bring herself to care. She’s  _ home. _

She kisses the top of Christopher’s head just because she feels like it. She doesn’t realise Annalise has been watching her until she looks up and Annalise is leaning in the doorway, a peculiar smile on her face that makes Bonnie’s breath catch in her throat.

“Bonnie?”

“Yes?”

“I love you too.” 


End file.
